"Then what is that cape?" asked Dick Sand, pointing to the promontory
on the north.

"I cannot tell you the name," replied the unknown, "for if I know the
country in the interior pretty well from having often traversed it, it
is my first visit to this shore."

Dick Sand reflected on what he had just learned. That only half
astonished him, for his calculation might have, and indeed must have,
deceived him, concerning the currents; but the error was not
considerable. In fact, he believed himself somewhere between the
twenty-seventh and the thirtieth parallel, from the bearings he had
taken from the Isle of Paques, and it was on the twenty-fifth parallel
that he was wrecked. There was no impossibility in the "Pilgrim's"
having deviated by relatively small digression, in such a long passage.

Besides, there was no reason to doubt the unknown's assertions, and, as
that coast was that of lower Bolivia there was nothing astonishing in
its being so deserted.

"Sir," then said Dick Sand, "after your reply I must conclude that we
are at a rather great distance from Lima."

"Oh! Lima is far away--over there--in the north!"

Mrs. Weldon, made suspicious first of all by Negoro's disappearance,
observed the newly-arrived with extreme attention; but she could
discover nothing, either in his attitude or in his manner of expressing
himself which could lead her to suspect his good faith.